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Iron Man: First Impressions (no spoilers)

By: MKLopez | in: Music | 8 Comments



iron man

First a disclaimer: I’m usually very lenient to forgive problems in comic-based movies. I didn’t hate Daredevil or Ghost Rider, like some fans do, even though I recognize that they were weak films.

That said, I had a LOT of fun with this film! From the very first scenes there was a campy, almost cheerful tone in all the performances, like RDJ and the cast were playing some inside jokes that they knew the comic-loving audience would get. This is a funnier version of Tony Stark than in the books, and I liked it. It didn’t feel overdone or forced, it was very natural and believable, not only for Start but for all the characters, even the over-the-top villains.

The effects, as expected, were awesome, and the CGI sequences integrate very well with the real world. Think of the nice work that Transformers did with that and you’ll have an idea. All the versions of Iron suit look 100% real. I had to say that this is not the only point where the movie reminded me of Transformers: lots of fun, great action sequences, and just the right dose of humor… the perfect summer popcorn flick.

Iron Man

Also, I went to see it with a friend who has never read the books and doesn’t like “silly” superhero movies, and she had a total blast, even more than me. She was clapping and laughing and totally into the story, so I think that says volumes about it.

If I had to nitpick, I would say that there were many plot points that were never completely resolved -even though you may say that is a good thing since it opens many possibilities for the sequel. Also, the story suffers from the same weak points that many origin stories have to overcome, namely having to explain a lot of things and having some dialog scenes that seem that only were put in there to justify the whole story (but this one makes a far better job about explaining the origin than most CB movies).

Also, there is a little plot twist near the end of the movie that took me completely by surprise. I won’t reveal it, but my friend said that it almost ruined what would have been (for her) a perfect plot. I won’t go that far, but I’m going to say that there will be a lot of comic fans that will be pissed off by it. In my case, I’ll just that it left me wanting real bad to see the sequel already!

In the end, I give the movie a big thumbs up, not only because it lived up to my expectations, but it surpassed them! Ranking: 9 out of 5!


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Posted on April 30, 2008

WOXY Special: Okkervil River New Music and Interview

By: Rustycat | in: Music | 1 Comment



Okkervil River

It’s rare to find a band that manages to mix melancholic sounds with fun melodic tunes that really reach out of the speakers and grab your attention. I’ve written about Okkervil River a few times in the past and yesterday Joe from WOXY.com (and Each Note Secure) sent me a link to his interview with the band in Cincinnati and I was thrilled. Once again, thanks for great music Joe!

Have a listen and a look below at over 30 minutes of new music and interviews:

Watch:


Listen to the full recording

Download: Okkervil River - Live On WOXY.com

Read the full post on Each Note Secure


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Posted on April 30, 2008

10 Terrible Movies by 10 Great Directors

By: DThompson | in: Movies | 22 Comments



Spielberg

1) Stephen Spielberg – Always (1989)
Spielberg patented a brand of cinema that fairly sparkled with magic on the screen. It’s a difficult quality to nail down, sweet but not quite sugary, a blend of attractive lighting, likable characters and perfection of detail. It seemed to always work. Well, not always. Spielberg’s remake of the war-time fantasy “A Guy Named Joe” has the Spielberg touch in spades yet all it delivers is a boring cloying mess. Even the likable trio of Richard Dreyfus, Holly Hunter and John Goodman can’t save this over-long mish-mash of styles. At least Goodman looks like a fire fighter, Dreyfus is woefully miscast as a devil-may-care type, like remaking “The Right Stuff” and choosing Woody Allen to play Chuck Yeager. So, to say “Richard Dreyfus has been better” is to qualify for understatement of the year. Above and beyond its casting flaws is a story-line that takes place in a world utterly foreign to most in the audience. The movie takes 40’s war-time sensibilities and clunkyly attempts to transfer them whole cloth into a tale of modern day forest fire pilots. Who knew dumping slurry was such dangerous work? “A Guy Named Joe” worked because of the context the war gave it. Men died, their wives grieved, the reality surrounded the audience of the day. They must have had an immediate emotional connection to Spencer Tracy playing the dead pilot urging his girl to get on with her life and helping the callow young pilot complete his mission. To transfer that social reality to a forest fire robs us of any immediate understanding and engenders an overpowering urge to shrug your shoulders and say “Who cares?”

sacrifice

2) Andrei Tarkovsky – The Sacrifice (1986)
Tarkovsky is a critical darling who seems genetically incapable of making a film less than three hours long. Not that there’s anything wrong with long movies, I just generally want something, anything, to happen. Apparently the plot is there’s been a nuclear war (though it was too expensive to show) and this old man tries to stop it. There. That’s the first ninety minutes. At this point my brother leaned over and whispered “If someone doesn’t get fucked or killed in the next five minutes, I’m leaving.” No lie, that’s exactly what he said. So then, it turns out, there’s this witch, who doesn’t look or act like a witch but you’re told she’s a witch, so she is. Aaaand, the old man has to screw her to get her to somehow use her witchy powers to make it so the nuclear war we’ve never seen sign one of hasn’t happened. So, he screws her- (To the GREAT frustration of my brother who then had to stay and watch the rest of the movie) –and whataya know, the nuclear war never happened, because, you know, your average “witch” can change reality on a global scale like that. Then, for a grand finale the old man runs around stacking all the dining room furniture in a pile. Oh, and he sets his house on fire. The end. There, I just saved you three hours.

eyes wide shut

3) Stanley Kubrick – Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
When a movie features a “big orgy scene” and it’s the most boring part of the film (or, indeed, of any film you’ve ever seen) you know there’s something very very wrong. What is this movie about anyway? The banality of wealth and luxury? If you ask me, I think Kubrick was making a meta film about the banality of cinema, a final “fuck you” to his fans. Who better to star in a film dedicated to boring meaninglessness than Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman whose on screen vapidity has never been more palpable. Of the two Kidman comes off marginally better while Cruise turns in yet another annoyingly self-satisfied performance. But, you know, even if they’d done the greatest work of their careers it still wouldn’t save this movie from being a pointless, meandering, unfocused muddle.

inland empire

4) David Lynch – Inland Empire (2007)
It pains me to include this because I’m a HUGE fan of Lynch but I simply cannot pay attention while watching this film. It just goes on and on meaning next to nothing while little of any importance happens. Laura Dern lives in a fancy house and she’s an actress making a movie and then she thinks she sees someone at the back of the set and walks off into the dark and comes out, in the film? In some alternate reality? Who knows. All I can tell you is she doesn’t live in a fancy house anymore, now she lives in a dinky hovel where her husband (I think it’s her husband) drinks beer around an outdoor grill with a bunch of hairy sweaty Polish guys. Oh, did I mention the people in the giant rabbit heads? There are people in giant rabbit heads delivering oblique dialogs that probably has something to do with some other thing and, oh I give up. Next thing I know I’ve walked away to the computer. I’ve never been one to demand coherence or meaning out of a Lynch film, but I do require that something of vague interest occur. Another film topping three hours that moves at a glacial pace while the audience fossilizes in their seats. Maybe I’d like the film’s second half better, if I could only stay awake through the first ninety minutes.

planet-of-the-apes

5) Tim Burton – Planet Of The Apes (2001)
One of Hollywood’s best visual stylists brings all the eye candy you’d expect to this needless and entirely inferior remake. A cameo by Charlton Heston only serves to remind you that a much better version of this film exists and that you would certainly be having a better time if that was what you were watching. You can literally feel yourself pining away for a hint of allegory, for a glimmer of meaning, even for the presence of Roddy McDowell. Ah, all for naught I’m afraid. At least I can console myself with the ample evidence that this was a paycheck film for Burton and not something he had a burning desire to inflict upon an innocent world. Finally, I will hate this movie forever for introducing the odious term “reimagining” to me. Why remake, excuse me, “reimagine” a film that was just fine in the first place? Will Hollywood never be satisfied until even the few good things they accidentally manage to produce are ground into the muck and recast as giant piles of stinking steaming excrement? Apparently not. You’d think a “reimagining” would have a bit more imagination on display.

casino

6) Martin Scorsese – Casino (1995)
Another unnecessary remake. OK, well, not a remake, just a retread of the same territory Scorsese covered in “Good Fellas” to much greater effect. This movie proves Marty can’t make an incompetent film, but he can make an irrelevant one. Sharon Stone contributes nothing, Joes Pesci plays exactly the same character he did in Goodfellas, I kept waiting for Ray Liotta to show up. Watching mob guys get theirs is one of America’s favorite pastimes so I’m sure we can count on more movies of this sort, but hopefully not from Scorsese.

barton fink

7) The Coen Brothers – Barton Fink (1991)
This is the kind of meandering pap good filmmakers create when they want to make a movie but don’t know what to make one about. A string of unfunny jokes, grating characters and gaping plot contrivances. John Goodman is completely wasted as a “mysterious” traveling salesman, that is, if it’s even possible to “waste” John Goodman.

jackie-brown

8) Quentin Tarantino – Jackie Brown (1997)
Tarantino built a career around cobbling bits of Elmore Leonard stories into “original” scripts – and it worked magnificently. Then he decided to actually film a Leonard novel, Rum Punch, which he retitled “Jackie Brown” after its lead character. For some reason everything that was great about Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction was entirely missing this time around. Another three hour bore-a-thon as the film spins its wheels leading up to a caper robbery, then takes all of two seconds on the crime itself. Even Sam Jackson’s foul mouth and Bridget Fonda’s feet couldn’t save this. Grudging kudos to Quentin for having the casting chops to select the great Pam Grier and Robert Forster, too bad it was for his worst film.

sam-raimi

9) Sam Raimi – Crimewave (1985)
After he hit the big time with his killer low budget horror film “The Evil Dead”, Sam Raimi decided to give his Three Stooges fetish free reign in this supposed-to-be-a-comedy. Unfortunately, his attempt, as scripted by the Cohen Brothers, is just not all that funny. In fact, there isn’t a truly amusing moment in the entire movie. What there are lots of, however, are those cringingly painful moments where actor and director are trying to be funny and failing miserably. A whole movie’s worth.

good-german

10) Steven Soderbergh – The Good German (2006)
A fairly desperate attempt to re-create the kind of film noir America used to churn out by the bucket load. All the moody black and white cinematography money can buy can’t bring the slightest sense of foreboding to the proceedings. I’ll give the film this though, the characters are dumb, dumb like big ol’ rocks, dumb like guys who should have the word “sucker” tattooed on their foreheads. You might think a story set in post-war Berlin and populated by beautiful German dames and lunkheaded American G.I.’s would be a noir classic. You would be wrong. Clooney plays the only utterly naive cynical newpaper man in the existence of the genre. He laces the film with tough-talking dialogue that mostly serves to get you wondering how a guy who’s supposed to be so worldly can be such a complete moron.. Director Soderbergh, for all his efforts, only manages to create a sordid atmosphere where you hate absolutely everyone. It’s just too bad a few characters are left standing at the end.


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Posted on April 28, 2008

Album Review: Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash

By: Yaya | in: Music | Leave a Comment



Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash (2007)

Prologue, to clean up the mess before we start

A few days ago, I mentioned Comets on Fire as one of my fav bands operating day. Their debut was a stunning psych album and they kept getting better and better from one album to the other. But the smartest career move Ethan Miller (guitar, vocals, songwriter) ever made, was having Ben Chasny joining the group as a guitarist. This move led to two results:

1. They became outrageously good.

2. They got signed to Sub-Pop.

Not only did they sign to SP, they kept their own spirit and didn’t become ‘a Sub Pop band’ (not that there’s anything wrong with it, some of my best friends yada yada yada…).

Then, they released their 2006 neo-psych masterpiece Avatar. And that was the point where Chasny crawled back to my cd-player, after a one year absence.

Ben who?
In 2005 I first paid notice to him when he released his first masterpiece (though he had several of terrific albums before) – “School Of Flower”, under his stage name “Six Organs of Admittance”. Like Comets, he released the album with a new label – Drag City - THE Holy Grail for people like Chasny.

The following year saw the release of the dark and mysterious “Sun Awakens” which made me understand that Chasny is not only a guitar player whom I share the same music heroes with (Jansch, Fahey, Basho, twisted krautrock), but he’s also very eclectic composer and arranger who keeps evolvng from one album to another – which makes me automatically poorer as I understand I’ll have no choice but to buy all his albums (aka “complete the catalogue”).

So, two amazing albums in one year – Avatar and Sun Awakens. And he was just getting started.

Ben Hur!
He almost missed 2007, but he knew there’s someone who may pick his album to be the first choice in a “best albums of the year” list (that person is me), so Drag City quickly released Shelter From The Ash. Yes. Another masterpiece.

Shelter is the only thing that this album doesn’t have. The squeaking, fuzzy roars being produced by Chasny’s guitar, do not provide a shelter for anyone and you have to be a real masochist to lay in Chasny’s bed of thorny roses and find your compfort in it, but, you know, like Jim said - people ARE strange.

Ben went through a journey in his last three albums, and became a real songwriter. While his first LP’s where mostly noisy-drone-folk (Steven R. Smith comes to mind), School Of Flower was the album where you could feel Chasny trying to up the game. Tracks became actual songs, rather than the beautiful abstract pieces he used to produce. Not the type of songs you’d put in the Deli’s jukebox, but songs that keep a clear structure, so you know exactly where the guitar comes in while he tries to kill your mama.

Shelter is an album that mixes a zillion types of influences. It gives Chasny the relief he needed after no new Comets album was released, and it allows him to express his wild, psychedelic guitar. On the other hand, it also expresses his acoustic guitar skills (“Goddess Atonement”). In pieces like Final Wing, he even sounds like a proper singer/songwriter (with the eccentric and frequently bizarre style of Espers or Nick Castro). Eight repetitive minutes that circle around one guitar line, backed up by strange noises that give the impression that the skies are closing in on us. But in a piece like Shelter From The Ash, he skewers us all, puts us on his grill and burns the flesh – WHAT THE FUCK? I’ll have what he’s having for breakfast.

Loneliness
Without knowing him personally, I’m guessing Chasny was a shoegazer when he was a kid. Probably listened to Bloodless endlessly. The lonely feeling is apparent in every single note. His compositions are venerable and introverted like a child that comes to school every day with his sandwich, and the bullies abuse him, take the sandwich and beat him up.

When I first heard Shelter, I immediately thought about Richard Thompson’s soundtrack of Werner Hertzog film – Grizzly Man. The same wilderness is there. The same mountains closing in with the same raven circling above. But Thompson kept it mostly cool throughout the soundtrack, while Chasny is boiling underneath the surface. He’s hurt.

Sometimes, these kids who were neglected by their classmates or were beaten up by bullies, end up in the cafeteria, shooting other kids. The tesnion is then relieved. So in order not to shoot anyone, Chasny took Tim Green (of the Fucking Champs) to hold him back before he shoots someone. Shelter looks like an album that was about to become similar to his Dust&Chimes album, but wanted to cut down on the killing, so he brought a friend to support him.

But Still
This is the kind of record where they use the old cliché of “it grows on you”. Shelter sounds impressive at first listen, but is it really that good? Take my advice – yes, it’s THAT good.

So Shelter is ambivalent, so what? A singer/songwriter on one hand and a Faust-ish follower on the other, the two work together perfectly and I have to say that if Tim Green wasn’t there, I have a feeling that it would have been a perfect, straight A record. Not that Green did a bad job, but it sometimes sounds like taking a hyperactive child, denying him the Ritalin, letting him break all the radios and food-processors in the house and then finally giving him the Ritalin.

You know what? Screw it. What am I on about? It’s a new Six Organs record and even if it was produced by George Bush (Senior), it would still be amazing. This guy will always win. He beats the statistics. He’s coming to get you.

Listen : Shelter From The Ash

Jade Like Wine

Buy - Physical: Amazon

Buy - Digital : Amazon

Watch : YouTube

[Yair’s Blog]


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Posted on April 27, 2008

Neva Dinova - Clouds Video

By: Charbarred | in: Music | 1 Comment



Check out the new video by Neva Dinova. Their album You May Already Be Dreaming is slowly taking over my playlist. Great songs, awesome guitars, what more can you ask you ask for?


[Neva Dinova on MySpace]


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Posted on April 26, 2008
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